David EkkensSouthern Adventist University
Collegedale, Tennessee

Of all the books that have been written recently dealing with the
creation/evolution debate, this book surely ranks at or near the top. As one college
teacher put it, "Darwin's Black Box really strengthened my faith."
Even though the author, Michael J. Behe, is Associate Professor of
Biochemistry at Lehigh University (Pennsylvania), he has a style of writing that makes
interesting reading for anyone, chemist or non-chemist. His illustrations range from
baking a cake, to a swim in the pool, to woodchucks crossing a thousand-lane freeway at
rush hour. He does include short sections of technical biochemistry in nearly every
chapter, but a non-chemist can skip those sections and still get the major message of the
book.
The book's main theme is an examination of problems associated with
applying Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection to cell evolution. Behe wants to
know if several small changes in a cell's chemicals could produce the chemical machines
that cells use to live.

Part I: The Box is Opened

In this first section, Behe describes why molecular details are
important. How life works at the molecular level was never explained by Darwin because the
science of biochemistry was nonexistent in Darwin's day. Therefore the cell was a black
box for Darwin  he really couldn't look into it to see how it worked or how it could
have evolved. Now, says Behe, our knowledge of biochemistry is advanced to the extent that
we can look into the black box and see if Darwinian theory can explain the evolution of
cell components.
As Behe states:

Anatomy is, quite simply, irrelevant to the question of whether evolution
could take place on the molecular level. So is the fossil record. It no longer matters
whether there are huge gaps in the fossil record.... The fossil record has nothing to tell
us about whether the interactions of [several chemicals involved in vision] could
have developed step-by-step.... Until recently ... evolutionary biologists could be
unconcerned with the molecular details of life because so little was known about them. Now
the black box of the cell has been opened, and the infinitesimal world that stands
revealed must be explained (p 22).

To demonstrate how upset some people are with neo-Darwinism, Behe
quotes from several scientists. He quotes a scientist named Lynn Margulis:
"'Neo-Darwinism, which insists on (the slow accrual of mutations), is in a complete
funk"' (p 26). Behe quotes two other scientists (Orr and Coyne) as saying: "'We
conclude  unexpectedly  that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian
view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are
weak'" (p 29).
But how can we test Darwinian theory and be able to accept or reject
it? Behe quotes the so-called "criterion of failure" from Charles Darwin's book The
Origin of Species, published in 1872:

'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not
possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would
absolutely break down' (p 39).

Behe then asks what kind of system could there be that "could
not possibly have been formed by 'numerous, successive, slight modifications.'" The
answer he gives is an irreducibly complex system:

... a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that
contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the
system to effectively cease functioning (p 39).

When we look at a large system (an eye, for example), its complexity
makes it practically impossible to think about all the molecules at the same time and to
guess how complicated structure could have evolved from a simpler structure. But if we
look at smaller structures, all necessary chemicals (and each of their functions) are
known. Therefore we should be able to see if the irreducibly complex system could have
evolved from some other functioning system. (Remember, natural selection only works on
functioning systems. The precursor to the system must function and each intermediate stage
must function  otherwise it will be eliminated. The other side of the coin labeled
"survival of the fittest" is labeled "death of the unfit.")

Part II: Examining the Contents of the Box

This is the "meat and potatoes" section of the book. Behe
examines several irreducibly complex systems: the cilium, the blood-clotting system,
protein production and transport in a cell, cellular defense mechanisms (immunity), and
production by a cell of AMP. Each of these systems consists of several interacting
chemicals.
Behe's conclusion from studying each of these is that the probability
of any of them evolving by Darwinian successive changes is infinitesimally small:

In summary, as biochemists have begun to examine apparently simple
structures like cilia and flagella, they have discovered staggering complexity, with
dozens or even hundreds of precisely tailored parts.... As the number of required parts
increases, the difficulty of gradually putting the system together skyrockets, and the
likelihood of indirect scenarios plummets (p 73).

At the end of each of the chapters in Part II, Behe describes how he
searched the professional literature to see if any good explanations have been published
of how molecular evolution occurred. Each of these searches ended in failure: the
conclusion is that no one knows. And yet, we are told that nothing makes sense in biology
except in the light of evolution.

Part III: What Does the Box Tell Us?

In this concluding section, Behe examines in more detail what has
been published in the professional literature concerning molecular evolution. The Journal
of Molecular Evolution, established in 1971, is devoted exclusively to answering how
life at the molecular level came to be. Approximately 1000 papers have been published in
JME over the last decade. Each of these papers falls into one of three classes. About 10%
of them deal with origin-of-life research. Classical evolutionists believe that life
originated by spontaneous generation. The first research of this type (done by Stanley
Miller in 1954) electrified the world when amino acids were produced. People assumed that
life would soon be made in the test tube. But listen to the conclusions quoted by Behe
from Klaus Dose, one of the researchers in the field:

'More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields
of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of
the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than to its solution. At present all
discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or
in a confession of ignorance' (p 168).

The second type of papers in JME (5%) deals with mathematical
methods for comparing and interpreting sequence data. Although interesting, these papers
assume that evolution is a gradual process; they do nothing to demonstrate it.
The third type of papers (about 80%) were sequence comparisons of
nucleic acids or proteins from different organisms. "Although useful for determining
possible lines of descent, ... comparing sequences cannot show how a complex biochemical
system achieved its function" (p 175). The conclusion Behe reaches is that "none
of the papers published in JME over the entire course of its life as a journal
has ever proposed a detailed model by which a complex biochemical system might have been
produced in a gradual, step-by-step Darwinian fashion" (p 176). (Behe has been
criticized for not mentioning a book by Cairns-Smith, Seven Clues to the Origin of
Life, which supposedly deals with some of the issues Behe raises.)
Behe's final chapters describe his overall conclusion: life was
designed by an intelligent being. Behe discusses design and goes into a long discussion of
early ideas of design. He asks why most scientists reject design and concludes that it has
to do with the implications of the design idea: if one side of the elephant is labeled
"intelligent design," the other side might be labeled "God." But why
do scientists not want to entertain ideas about God? Behe discusses several reasons in his
final chapter.
You owe it to yourself to read this book. One word of caution: don't
read this book hoping to disprove evolution, and please don't tell people that evolution
has now been proven false. Darwin's Black Box does not prove that evolution did
not or could not happen. Behe makes it clear that he is not saying anything about
evolution at higher levels or about how long ago life originated. In his introductory
chapter he states:

For the record, I have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions
of years old that physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common
descent ... fairly convincing.... I think that evolutionary biologists have contributed
enormously to our understanding of the world.... however, I do not believe [natural
selection] explains molecular life (p 5).